Leave it to me to take the idea of a simple veggie plate, which is what this was supposed to be, and turn it into something complicated. None of the dishes were difficult to make, it was just
several things to do, as opposed to one main thing and a quick side of steamed broccoli or something. The baked beans were simple enough – we love the Happy Herbivore recipe for these. Canned baked beans are too sweet and just aren’t as good. The recipe calls for a can
of navy bean that you don’t rinse, but since we use dried beans instead of canned, I add a little bit of extra water to them. We normally make these whenever we want baked beans. They’re really
very easy and I made the rest of dinner while they were baking. I put together the zucchini cake mixture as soon as I put the beans into the oven and set it aside. We love these. The recipe is in
one of my favorite books, The Vegan Table, and was one of the very first vegan recipes I ever made.
They’re sort of like vegan crab cakes. Now, I’ve never in my life eaten a non-vegan crab cake (despite having grown up on an island) so I have no idea of these are in any way close or not, but
they are really delicious. It’s the Old Bay seasoning I think I like so much and I always put a little extra in the mixture. These aren’t hard to make, but they do take a little bit of time just
to shred the zucchini, mix it all up and then form and fry the patties. Still, they’re well worth the little bit of time it takes to make them. The corn is from the Vedge Cookbook and we love it. It doesn’t need long to cook, so I went ahead and did the prep for that next and set it aside for a few
minutes while I made the remoulade. There are about a million different recipes for this out there, but I really like the one in 1000 Vegan Recipes. It takes a tiny bit longer to do, but it is so much better than any of the others I’ve tried, most of which are too ketchupy. Once that was done, the corn went in
the oven and I fried the zucchini cakes while Seth made a nice salad to go with everything else, just to get some green on. All in all, this entire meal took me about an hour, which isn’t a crazy
amount of time, but longer than it would’ve taken to use canned beans, grill some corn on the cob and steam some broccoli.